A gourd weighing 2,058 pounds took first prize and set a tournament record at a pumpkin contest in Northern California.

John Hawkley, 56, grew the winning pumpkin and entered it at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in California's Napa Valley, an area famous for its wine grapes.

Hawkley "squashed" his competition, beating the runner-up by more than 300 pounds.

Hawkley, a production manager for a newspaper, credited his success at least in part to warm weather. He ended up with a total of six pumpkins on a 4,500-square-foot patch of land in his front yard. One of the other pumpkins also weighed more than 2,000 pounds.

"My wife said this is as much pumpkin patch area as I'm going to get," he said.

Hawkley said he will use the $13,000 in prize money to make repairs on his home, which was damaged during an earthquake in the Napa area in August.

All 30 pumpkins weighed at this year's tournament were from California, according to contest spokesman Tim Beeman. The contest, held in in Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco, normally gets growers from Oregon and Washington as well.

Last year's winning pumpkin was also from the Napa Valley and came in at 1,985 pounds.

Critical thinking challenge: Safeway is a supermarket chain. Why would it sponsor this contest? (Hint: have you heard of Safeway before?)

How was this pumpkin even grown to this size? Let alone how long it took and how it was transported. This has me wondering how big pumpkins will get in the years to come

rowdyl-Koc

10/18/2014 - 09:41 p.m.

Safeway would sponsor something like this because they're a big company and sometimes big companies do stuff like that to promote themselves. I bet that pumpkin was a GMO.

colleenl-Ste

10/19/2014 - 09:32 a.m.

All I can think about while reading this is how much fun is would be to carve a pumpkin that weighs 2,058 pounds. I'm happy to see that he is going to use the money wisely instead of going to spend it on pointless things.

CarterSc-Wil

10/19/2014 - 10:34 a.m.

This is a really big pumpkin! I think that they did a good job on making it big and keeping it healthy. Hopefully they make pumpkin pie out of it!

NickB-2

10/19/2014 - 01:06 p.m.

This article is about a large pumpkin. This pumpkin weighs 2058 lbs, beating last years record of 1985 lbs. I have no idea how the heck you could grow a one ton pumpkin, but this is really cool. The man won 13000 dollars in the competition, and is going to use it to repair his home. Also, he will probably be eating a lot of pumpkin pie!

jasonm-Koc

10/19/2014 - 01:25 p.m.

I think that is it very interesting how he is using the money to repair his house from the earthquake. I want to know how he grew it to become that large. The mans hard work really payed off and he broke a record.

havenr-Koc

10/19/2014 - 04:46 p.m.

Now this is one big pumpkin! I know I wouldn't be able to pick that pumpkin from the pumpkin patch because it would weigh more than my car! It just makes me wonder how many pumpkin pies can be made from that one pumpkin alone. Mmm Pumpkin Pie..